War Tragedies Strike Families Twice

By

Michael M. Phillips

Updated Dec. 20, 2012 10:36 p.m. ET

MILLTOWN, N.J.—One night in March 2008, William and
Christine Koch
opened their front door to see two soldiers in green dress uniforms bearing news that their son, Army Cpl.
Steven Koch,
had been killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan.

Two years later, Mr. and Mrs. Koch opened the door to see two police officers in blue. This time, they learned their daughter, Lynne, brokenhearted over her brother's death, had killed herself with an overdose of prescription drugs.

Christine Koch knelt at a memorial for her son Steven that the family erected at his elementary school, Our Lady of Lourdes in Milltown, N.J. Cpl. Steven Koch died in Afghanistan in 2008. Michael Rubenstein for The Wall Street Journal

"She is a casualty of this war, and I don't care what anybody says," Mrs. Koch said. "If my son was not killed, my daughter would be here."

The military tracks suicides among the troops. The Department of Veterans Affairs studies self-inflicted deaths among people who have left the service. Nobody collects data on suicides among the parents, siblings and spouses of the more than 6,500 Americans killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But anecdotal evidence from military families, support groups and suicide survivors suggests that over the past 11 years of war, the U.S. has experienced a little-recognized suicide outbreak among the bereaved. This second round of tragedy often takes place years after a loved one's death, when the finality of the loss becomes inescapable.

"We've all had the idea of suicide at one time or another," said
Nadia McCaffrey
of Tracy, Calif., whose son Patrick died in an ambush in Iraq in 2004. She said she personally knows a half dozen military parents who have killed themselves.

To learn more about war grief, researchers at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, a federal institution in Bethesda, Md., are recruiting 3,000 people to participate in a first-ever U.S. study of bereavement among families of those killed on active duty.

"We don't know whether or in what ways military-service deaths—combat-related, accidents or suicides—differ from similarly sudden or violent civilian deaths in their impact on bereaved family members," said Stephen Cozza, a psychiatrist involved in the research.

The violent and faraway nature of combat death—often following months of dread—may make it harder to accept for those left behind, said
Bonnie Carroll.
She founded the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, or TAPS, after her husband, an Army general, died in a 1992 plane crash.

"To have someone come to the house and deliver this devastating information that you'd never see them again is impossible to absorb," Mrs. Carroll said. In her grief after her husband's death, she found herself taking high-speed, late-night drives along the Alaska coast, as if daring herself to join him.

"When you lose a loved one, death is very real," she said. "It's at the forefront of your every waking thought. It seems as if you just yearn to be reunited with your loved one."

The U.S. military assigns a casualty-assistance officer to families in the wake of a combat death, to help secure insurance payments and other benefits, and also to steer survivors to emotional help. Widows and children can retain their military health insurance, which covers antidepressants and psychiatric services. Since 2003, VA Veterans Centers also have offered counseling to all surviving family members.

"Support for our family members does not stop," said Marine Corps spokeswoman Maj.
Shawn Haney.
"It is always there and available if they want or need it."

TAPS and other private organizations offer grief camps for children, peer counseling groups for parents and spouses, as well as telephone hotlines.

Since April, seven family members of deceased service members have called TAPS in apparent suicide crises, the group said. Then there are the family members who either don't seek help or are immune to its consolations.

Jo Beth Brookshire,
age 71, suffered from depression even before her 36-year-old son, Maj.
Sid Brookshire,
died in a bomb attack in Iraq in 2007, an example of how a combat death can be a final blow in an already-troubled life.

Soon after her son was killed, Ms. Brookshire guzzled vodka, swallowed a bottle of Excedrin PM and walked into the ocean at Laguna Beach, Calif. The surf beat her back to shore and passersby pulled her to safety. She survived two more attempts over the following years.

"I had a hard, hard time with life after Sid died," Ms. Brookshire said. "I've never loved anybody like I loved Sid."

Each year, roughly 12 out of every 100,000 people in the U.S. kill themselves, according to 2010 data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. No similar accounting exists for military families.

Mrs. Koch, who has wrestled with despondency since Steven's combat death and Lynne's suicide, said, "Nobody knows what goes on behind these closed doors of our house."

Sister

Lynne had a history of suicidal thoughts and mental-health problems, including bipolar disorder, according to medical records. She saw a therapist while a teenager, her mother said, but recovered her cheerfulness when she went to college.

As the eldest of three children, Lynne was a "little mom" to her brothers, Steven and Billy, her parents said. After college, she became an estimator at the electrical-contracting firm where her father worked.

Billy, the middle child, was a student at Pace University in Manhattan and on Sept. 11 watched as terrified office workers jumped to their deaths from the upper floors of the World Trade Center.

The terror attacks motivated Steven to enlist. He was 23 and five weeks from the end of his combat tour when an insurgent drove a truck filled with explosives into a building where his unit was resting. Mrs. Koch, a 55-year-old oncology nurse, had been telling patients that her son had called to say he was coming home soon.

When the uniformed soldiers came to the door, Mrs. Koch hit one of them on the shoulder each time he started to say, "We are sorry to inform you…"

"You have the wrong the house, you have the wrong soldier," she recalled screaming at him. "You misidentified. My son is coming home."

Lynne spoke at the dedication of a black-marble memorial to her brother at their elementary school, Our Lady of Lourdes, in Milltown.

"When once a sunrise meant so many new beginnings, it now rises to merely blossom what's left of the flowers at the ending of a season," Lynne said. "I find no glory in this sunrise, no comfort. I find no hope in this new day. My brother is gone."

Still, for more than a year after Cpl. Koch's death, Lynne sought refuge in the fantasy that Steven was alive in Afghanistan. She "worried she would 'fall apart'…if and when she allowed herself to acknowledge fully that Steven was dead," according to a therapist's report.

The bubble burst in 2009 when she wrote in an email to Mrs. Koch: "Mommy, I finally realize Steven isn't coming home."

During that period, she was on antidepressants, antipsychotics and other medications, her records show. She spent days in tears, chanting, "I want my brother," Mrs. Koch recalled.

In September 2009, the therapist became concerned about Lynne's "suicidal thoughts," although Lynne revealed no plan to kill herself, according to medical records. At the therapist's suggestion, Lynne's boyfriend delivered her to Hackensack University Medical Center, where, according to her mother, she stayed for about a week.

On May 6, 2010, Lynne emailed her parents: "I love you very much."

Mr. Koch was worried enough by the note to give her a call. Lynne assured her father she was fine and talked him out of making the hourlong drive to her home in Wayne, N.J., he said.

Lynne, then 29 years old, had been preparing her death for weeks, her mother believes. She left notes for her parents and Billy. She described where she wanted to be buried. On her bed she laid out the black gown and diamond necklace she wanted to wear. Then she swallowed a lethal mixture of medications.

At 2:20 in the morning, Mrs. Koch stood on the stairs as the two police officers talked to Mr. Koch. At first she thought they said Lynne had overdosed and was hospitalized. Then she saw the ashen face of one of the officers.

"Wait a minute," she said. "Are you trying to tell me my daughter is dead?"

"Yes, ma'am, I am," the officer said.

Mrs. Koch dropped weeping to the floor.

Earlier this year, Mr. and Mrs. Koch filed suit against Lynne's psychiatrist, nurse and pharmacy, alleging they were negligent in the care they provided her at a time the medical team should have known she was suicidal. The defendants deny the allegations.

"I don't know where we stand either, the three of us who are left," Mr. Koch said. "We're on the same line that she stood on. Hopefully you never cross that line like she did."

Mother

By early September 2008,
George Vaughan
thought his wife, Debra, was finally recovering. She laughed more than she had in the 17 months since their son, 20-year-old Michael Vaughan, had been killed in a suicide bomb attack in Iraq. She volunteered to help train search-and-rescue dogs.

He said he now realizes she was apparently relieved to have made her decision.

The senior Vaughans met in the Army in 1987. He is fully disabled from his service in the first Gulf War; she was in military intelligence and then worked at the post office in Lincoln City, Ore. They signed the papers when Michael begged them to let him enlist at age 17. He became a scout in the 82nd Airborne Division.

The military advised the Vaughans not to view Michael's body. But Mrs. Vaughan rushed the casket to make sure it was her son inside. Mr. Vaughan went after her, and together they saw their son's head, wrapped in gauze, like a mummy. The funeral director took a photo of the crucifix tattoo on Michael's arm to assuage his mother's doubts.

Michael's death "just crushed Debra," recalled Mr. Vaughan, 50, who lives in Otis, Ore. She built a shrine in her son's bedroom—flags, medals and military tokens in an oak-and-glass cabinet. Mr. Vaughan discovered later she didn't take the antidepressants her doctor had prescribed.

On Sept. 27, 2008, the couple attended an event honoring veterans, where Mr. Vaughan was scheduled to speak. Mrs. Vaughan, 42 years old, left early, saying she wasn't feeling well. He returned home to find his wife's car gone.

When he reached her cellphone, she was at the cemetery in St. Paul, standing next to Michael's grave. "George, I love you," she said. "If I'm unsuccessful, I don't want life support."

He heard the gunshot. Debra's ashes are buried in Michael's grave, held in a wooden urn with a brass plaque that reads: "Rest in Peace with Mike."

Father

Those who try and fail to take their own lives provide vivid insight into the motivations of those who complete suicides. Some talk of wanting to join lost sons or brothers. Others seek relief from anguish.

Scott Warner
said he was numb for the first 18 months after his son, Pvt.
Heath Warner,
was killed by a hidden bomb in Iraq on Nov. 22, 2006. The remembrance ceremonies that accompany a military death helped keep the pain at bay for a while.

"The challenges of trying to work, hold the family together, the reality of Heath's death—my emotional reserves began to deplete," said Mr. Warner, 49 years old, from Canton, Ohio. "It was like part of your heart was torn out of you."

He would come home from work, go to his bedroom and mix booze and pills. The nadir came in 2010, when he and his wife learned that Heath's body may have been mislabeled or misplaced at Arlington National Cemetery.

Mr. Warner went to Arlington for the disinterment of the body in his son's grave. "That sent me over the edge," he said, "because I had to look at this decomposed body." Mr. Warner could only tell it was Heath from the tattoo on his arm.

"I don't know how to describe the darkness," he said. "It was unlike anything I'd ever felt before." Four years after Heath's death, Mr. Warner took a handful of drugs and washed it down with gin.

He survived the night, and awoke to a gradual realization that his son would have wanted him to live. "You have to make a choice, either I'm going to live for the living or I'm going to stay living for the dead," Mr. Warner said.

Brother

Lance Cpl.
Alex Arredondo's
father,
Carlos Arredondo,
was painting his fence in Hollywood, Fla., when a Marine van arrived in 2004 to deliver the news that his 20-year-old son had been killed by a sniper.

"I was begging God to wake me up from this bad dream," Mr. Arredondo recalled. He tried to shoo the Marines off his property, but they decided to stay until his wife, Melida Arredondo, came home to comfort him.

Before his wife returned, Mr. Arredondo grabbed a hammer, a five-gallon can of gasoline and a propane torch from the garage. He smashed the Marine van's window, climbed inside and splashed gas around him, soaking his socks, pants and shirt. Then he ignited the torch.

The blast blew him out of the van. Ms. Arredondo, Alex's stepmother, arrived at the house and found her husband in flames. The Marines and others managed to put out the fire.

"It was this crazy moment I wasn't expecting," said Mr. Arredondo, 52 years old. "There are no scripts for how I'm supposed to handle all of this." He suffered burns on a quarter of his body.

A separate notification team had gone that day to the house of Lance Cpl. Arredondo's mother,
Victoria Foley,
age 47, in Norwood, Mass., where the Marine's 17-year-old brother Brian was living. Brian learned of the death and then saw his father burning on cable TV news.

Alex's death hit Brian hard. He dropped out of school, fell into drug use and got in trouble with the police. In March 2011, he threatened officers with a machete, saying, "Shoot me, shoot me," according to his parents. He landed in a psychiatric hospital and then in jail.

On Dec. 19, 2011, Brian hanged himself in the shed outside his mother's house. He was having girlfriend problems, and criminal charges were still pending. His father and mother said Brian's downward slide began when his brother was killed.

"He really didn't want to live after he lost his brother," said Mr. Arredondo.

Mr. Arredondo and his 47-year-old wife were hospitalized in 2010 for "rampant depression," Ms. Arredondo said. Mr. Arredondo is considering checking in again. Ms. Foley, Alex's mother, said she thought about suicide this year. Now, she said, she feels distraught but stable.

Stepmother

Marie Coon's
suicide in 2009 followed two years of despondency over her stepson Jimmy's death in Iraq. Ms. Coon, formerly a welder in the Air Force, couldn't forgive herself for failing to talk him out of joining the Army, family members said.

"She thought it was her fault that he got killed," said her husband,
James Coon,
age 55. "She kept blaming herself even though he was 21 years old when he went in."

Ms. Coon, who sewed wedding dresses for a living, had a turbulent life and was estranged from two other children from previous marriages. She discussed killing herself, said her mother-in-law,
Helen Hurd,
who lived with the couple at the time.

Her sister,
Cindy Gattenby,
said Ms. Coon visited a psychic to communicate with Jimmy and make sure he didn't blame her for his death.

"I spent the last nine years doing things for his benefit and basing decisions on how it would affect him," Ms. Coon told the psychic in a recorded phone session months after Jimmy's death. "Now I don't know what to do or where to go."

With her marriage unraveling, she left her home in Paradise, Calif., and moved in with a Southern California couple who had also lost their son at war.

On Mother's Day, 2009, Ms. Coon, 48 years old, taped up the windows of her pickup truck and lighted two hibachi grills in the front seat. She crawled into the back seat and waited for the carbon monoxide to kill her.

The note she left behind said she was going to be with Jimmy. Tattooed on her arm was a portrait of him with the caption, "A mother's love is forever."

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